We will run into all sorts of issues. For example, there are already subscription models for cars. Want a seat heating? Nice! US$9.99 per month, only!
Chips can be printed on flexible plastics for years, but we are approaching sizes now that makes it potentially possible to include this into all sorts of things. With very low power this opens up all sorts of "invisible" ways to power them, and guess what? They run software. Now imagine these software pieces running a subscription model. And our lives are increasingly infiltrated with all sorts of such tech, unseen, and this subscription model path is a very slippery slope towards hell.
I should also note here that there are huge differences between for example paying for "service" (but you do own the stuff), and this "cloud SaaS" approach that is often taken, where you own exactly nothing. Former is ok, a fair deal I would say, latter is a bane to our society. Keep in mind that the more our world depends on such things, the more these things become infrastructure, and infrastructure has some added requirements most of these services don't and won't fulfill.
So the subscription model worked well for (some kinds of) software.
And yes, businesses want reoccurring revenue (they'd rather rent/lease me the car than sell it outright.)
But fundamentally, with software, something is on _offer_ for the subscription. In my case we use subscriptions to pay for ongoing support staff (which customers _want_) because we can't fund support from sales (that's not sustainable.) Support-pay-as-you-go is not popular because the person needing support needs it now (not in 30 days once procurement has signed off on it.)
Sure, there are subscription models for cars. There are also lots of cars that are sold outright. There are lots of cars sold on lease or HP basis. There are lots of models to choose from.
Chips have been running software (microcode) since forever. That software pretty much never changes, I certainly can't phone Intel for support, so I don't pay for a subscription on it.
Should you buy physical books, or just ebooks for your kindle? That's up to you. Some like one way, some like the other. Clearly the ownership is different. But then some people own a house, and some rent. I'm not sure any of this is new.
Your last example is the crux of the matter. Consider:
As a percentage of the population, fewer people (in the US at least, though I get the sense this is true elsewhere too) own their home now than any time in living memory. Shocks to the housing market exacerbated this trend, most famously in 2008 and 2020. Housing precarity (which we can simplify as "risk of homelessness", and for which actual homelessness is a decent if imperfect proxy) has risen across the board and I think it's fair to assume these are correlated
Sure, there are valid reasons to want to rent your home. More flexibility to move maybe. Not wanting to deal with maintenance I suppose (though as economic and legal power has shifted in turn to landlords, you can effectively be responsible for maintaining a home in that your landlord will not be compelled to fix issues that harm you, but also legally barred from doing so), but it's objectively and by far the economically worse option, and the vast majority of people don't actually want to rent for their entire lives. The reason more people don't own their homes is because they are economically prevented from doing so by a combination of squeezed supply and increasingly unfavorable competition with massive companies and trusts that treat real estate primarily as as investment vehicle. People who rent and don't want to largely don't have a choice
Nonetheless, press written from the perspective of the class who owns houses treats this as a weird preference the younger generation has for some reason. Sure, it's inherently precarious and long-term financially ruinous, but I guess they just like it that way?
Usually when vast swaths of people are making choices that harm them while benefiting powerful people, the first-line model we should apply to the situation is not weird preferences
This is more obvious with housing, but arguably even more true of tools, especially ones people rely on for their own work
Chips can be printed on flexible plastics for years, but we are approaching sizes now that makes it potentially possible to include this into all sorts of things. With very low power this opens up all sorts of "invisible" ways to power them, and guess what? They run software. Now imagine these software pieces running a subscription model. And our lives are increasingly infiltrated with all sorts of such tech, unseen, and this subscription model path is a very slippery slope towards hell.
I should also note here that there are huge differences between for example paying for "service" (but you do own the stuff), and this "cloud SaaS" approach that is often taken, where you own exactly nothing. Former is ok, a fair deal I would say, latter is a bane to our society. Keep in mind that the more our world depends on such things, the more these things become infrastructure, and infrastructure has some added requirements most of these services don't and won't fulfill.